“Your broken leg,” interrupted Ashton––“it made me forget. You had saved me with the rope. I had to help you. Now I see how foolish I have been. I should have left you to lie here, and flung myself back over into the water.”
“Why?” calmly queried Blake.
“Why! You ask why?” cried Ashton, his eyes ablaze with excitement, his whole body quivering. 335 “Can’t you see? Are you blind? What do I care about myself if I can save her from you? I shall not try to escape. You shall never go up there to work her harm!”
“Harm her? You mean put through this irrigation project?”
“No!” shouted Ashton. “Don’t lie and pretend, you hypocrite! You know what I mean! You know she could not hide how you were enticing her!”
Blake stared in utter astonishment. Then, regardless of his leg, he sat up and said quietly: “I see. I thought you must have understood when she told me, there at the last moment before we started. She is my sister.”
“Sister!” scoffed Ashton. “You liar! You have no sister. Your sisters died years ago. Genevieve told me.”
“That was what I told her. I believed it true. But it was not true. Belle did not die––God! when I think of that! It has helped me through this fight––it helped me crawl up here with that leg dangling. Good God! To think of Jenny waiting for me up there, and Son, and little Belle too––little Belle whom all these years I thought dead!”
Ashton stood as if turned to stone. “Belle––you call her Belle? She told me––Chuckie only a nickname!” he stammered. “Adopted––her real name Isobel!” 336
“We always called her Belle––Baby Belle! She was the youngest,” said Blake.